There is a simple reason why Web Developer is such a hot job right now. Put simply, what Web Developers do is create how we experience … the web. If you proceed from the notion that every person who engages with the web would prefer a great experience, then you can say that everyone who engages with the web would prefer that a Web Developer have done a great job. Companies of course know this, so they hire Web Developers to ensure their sites provide great experiences. So, lots of websites and lots of users means lots of demand. LOTS of demand.

There is having tech skills, and there is working in tech. These are VERY different things.

The former is very broad, the latter is comparatively narrow. When it comes to career planning, it’s crucial to understand the distinction. Too many people are opting not to learn tech skills, either because they don’t want to work in tech, or don’t think they can. But tech skills get you hired just about anywhere, NOT just “in tech.”

“Ongoing acceleration of the tech industry is a main reason why tech skills are in demand. However, it’s not just the software and mobile app startups that are searching for tech-savvy talent. Almost every company needs these kind of skilled people.”

So, it’s not about working “in tech.” It’s about becoming one of these “skilled people.”

Nanodegree programs are built with a mission in mind: to equip students with the most in demand skills being sought after by the best companies. To achieve this objective, we design curricula in partnership with a shortlist of leading brands like Google, AT&T, Facebook, Salesforce, Cloudera, and more. These curriculum partnerships ensure that the skills our students are mastering are the same skills top employers want to see in their candidates.

Building Nanodegree programs in this way makes for a mutually beneficial employment ecosystem. Companies gain access to an extraordinary talent pool rich with qualified candidates, and our students connect directly to the top organizations where they want to work.

“We are looking for candidates with the skills to tackle large-scale tech problems. Udacity students have demonstrated both their technical abilities and go-getter attitudes, making them an impressive pool of candidates to source from.” ~Francois Bergeron, Engineer Recruitment, Global Human Resources Department at Rakuten

Talent Source is where this connection happens. Each Udacity student has a unique profile that can be highly optimized to represent their best work and showcase their most valuable skills. Collectively, these student profiles are organized into an exclusive database—called Talent Source—which vetted partner organizations use to source new talent for their open roles.

Hiring managers and recruiters can search for student candidates based on a number of criteria including skills, location, preferred employment type, and more. Upon identifying positive matches, these hiring partners can then review student profiles, delve into student projects, and start matching ideal candidates to open roles within their organizations. Student profiles also include resumes and direct links to LinkedIn and GitHub accounts.

Students can learn more about profile optimization, tech and soft skill development, and additional career resources in this blog post, and organizations who wish to apply for access to our Talent Source service can click here to do so.

We feel that Talent Source is a natural extension of the Nanogree program philosophy, and a direct expression of both our mantra—Students First—and our message—Be In Demand.

When we first began to shape what would become the debut Nanodegree program, foremost in our collective minds was a core belief often expressed by our founder and CEO Sebastian Thrun, that the ultimate value proposition of education is employment. As we investigated the full measure of what this meant, and how it translated into an actual program, we came to realize that what we were engaged in was a wholly new iteration of outcome-based education, and as such, the value proposition wasn’t so much a job in and of itself, but the life a job makes possible.

From that moment on, we knew that the process of connecting students and employers had to be something special, something elevated, something unique. Top students, top skills, top organizations. That’s Talent Source. Where the job you want, becomes the life you deserve.

There is a talent shortage out there across many key industries such as biotech, finance, software development, and more. Employers are reevaluating their hiring and recruitment strategies as they struggle to fill critical roles necessary to innovate and remain competitive. Udacity builds curriculum specifically to address these talent needs, and to ensure that every one of our students is equipped with the vital skills necessary to assume these crucial positions. Companies are extremely eager to discover talented job-seekers, and one of our core objectives is to facilitate direct connections between our hiring partners and our emerging graduates.

Announcing Udacity Talent Source

With this goal in mind, we’re excited to announce the launch of a new product that will directly connect top employers with our students: Udacity Talent Source.

This new Employer Sourcing Tool is a profile directory of Udacity Nanodegree program students, and employers who use it can access student portfolios, review projects, experience firsthand the skills and experience on display, and even create a search for candidates that meet certain specifications, like “someone who is willing to relocate to New York City, is proficient in Swift, and has built an iOS app.”

Udacity Student Profiles

Your new Udacity profile is a powerful representation of your accomplishments, and will be a great asset as you pursue your employment objectives.When you opt-in to our recruiting services, you make it possible for top employers—verified and vetted by Udacity—to directly contact you for interviews and about available positions.

Employer interest in this service is currently very high, so we’re upgrading it to accommodate a significant increase in the amount of hiring partners using it.Now is an excellent time to familiarize yourself with the new features, so that your profile is fully optimized when employers start accessing the service next week.

Optimizing Your Udacity Profile

The new features we’ve developed offer students the opportunity to add greater depth and complexity to their profiles, while also allowing for increased flexibility and more granular control.

Seeing Udacity students in fulfilling careers is what motivates us. It’s our passion, and our mission. We believe rewarding employment is the destiny of every Udacity student. Why? Because of the education and support our students receive. We believe our students emerge from our programs the best equipped, most prepared, highest skilled candidates out there. We actually know this from firsthand experience, because one thing we learned very early on is that Udacity graduates make AMAZING Udacity Project Reviewers!

Project Reviews are a critical component of our Nanodegree programs, and we maintain extremely high standards, with an emphasis on both the qualitative and the quantitative. Oliver Cameron, Udacity VP of Engineering & Product, recently described the early days of building our project review system in a post on Medium:

Our challenge was to scale project reviews while fulfilling two objectives. The first was that we had to give quality personal and human feedback to all of our students. We’re a teaching company, so this has been embedded in our DNA from day one. The second was that it had to be fast, meaning that if a student submitted their project on a Sunday at 10AM, they would have their project reviewed by noon that very same day. Fast feedback loops are essential for effective learning.